


The Facts of Life

by JenniferOksana



Category: Reaper (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-18
Updated: 2007-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1635512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/JenniferOksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The devil knows about sexual politics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Facts of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Abby

 

 

"So I've heard things are getting serious with Katie," the devil said, walking next to Sam as he stocked lawn fertilizer. "And I realized that we might need to have a little talk."

Sam did not want to have a little talk with Satan about anything, let alone Katie, possible actual daughter of the actual devil. "I think that I got this one," Sam said. "It's a sin to do it before marriage, so giving in to my raging hormones is pulling me further into your grasp. Oh, well. It's not like I have a choice or anything."

Satan's brow crinkled and he gave Sam a bemusedly confused look. "That's some straight-up horse-puckey if I ever heard it," he said with a raffish chuckle. "You're the product of millions of years of evolution that wants you to breed young, as well as being closely related to the bonobo chimpanzee, who think a...well, you don't need to know that yet...but to them, the sexual act is social interaction."

Satan was right: Sam did not need to know that about bonobos. What was worse was that Sock probably knew all about it, and would explain in detail when Sam outlined his latest conversation with the devil. But Sam had just noticed something interesting.

"Wait, you believe in evolution?" Sam asked. "Doesn't your presence here suggest the Bible version of the story is true with God and the Devil and the titanic soul struggle?"

The devil waved his hand and shrugged. "People in the ancient Near East were busy mastering the concept of making iron. They didn't quite have the capacity to understand the details of where babies came from, let alone the idea that our physical forms are the result of billions of years of interaction, adaptation, and mutation," he said. "They told stories about what their mind could understand, sort of like those people on the Internet who write, what do you call it, oh yeah, fan fiction."

Sam couldn't have been more appalled if someone had told him that the whole reaper thing was a giant joke and he'd totally fallen for it. "So the Bible is..."

"Super-famous fanfic. Kind of like Cassandra Claire, but with less leather pants," Satan said with a shrug. "Anyway, we were talking about the birds and the bees, right? And how you have the ridiculous, 'fanon'-derived notion that the sin is doing it before you're married."

"Well, then, what's wrong with sex?" asked Sam. "It seems to get everyone in trouble."

"It's true that sex does have a high tendency to lead to temptation," the devil agreed. "But it starts with dehumanization, Sam. The pursuit of sex gets uncoupled, if you'll excuse the pun, from the pursuit of the person -- and I hate to say it, but usually the female person -- the sex would be shared with."

Why was he taking the bait on this? Satan was like a freaking leech. He just clamped on and sucked the life out of you until you picked him off.

"So, check, pursuing sex and not relationships is bad. Hence, why premarital sex is riskier than marital sex," Sam said, folding his arms. "Look, I have five more fifty pound bags to heft before I start on the manure, so unless you have a point..."

"You really have no understanding of the history of marriage, do you, Sammy boy?" Satan asked with one of his smiles. "There's a reason Marx rightfully decries it. In some ways it's even more dehumanizing, as women trade sex and undervalued domestic labor for security and social approval. I can't think of anything _less_ romantic than an industrial-age marriage. Well, except for toe fungus."

"Wait. Wait," Sam said, feeling like he was being spun around and around and around on a merry-go-round of crazy. "There's no way that the devil is a commie."

"No, it's true, I'm a strong market-values laissez-faire capitalist," the devil said with a shrug. "But that guy Marx could always make you think. And I think he's right."

"So if marriage is dehumanizing, and the pursuit of sex is dehumanizing, does that mean that you think that celibacy is the only way? Because I gotta tell you, that hasn't been working so well for the Catholic Church," Sam said. "Also, I don't understand how this has anything to do with Katie or the facts of life."

Satan shrugged. "I think it has everything to do with Katie," he said. "I never said premarital sex is riskier than marital sex. I said that dehumanizing people in the pursuit of sex...whether it's regular ol' stereotypical demonized sex, or socially approved sex that brings along a free housekeeper...is the risk."

"But you make it seem like there's no way to have sex without dehumanizing the girl!" Sam said, extremely frustrated at the devil and his...his...circumlocutions, and seriously, hanging out with this guy was doing wonders for his vocabulary. "I don't think that's true."

"Well, golly gee, how does that work?" the devil asked, waving at a random Work Bench customer. "Since you seem so sure it's true and I haven't watched millennia of human behavior or anything."

Sam glared at his diabolical secret employer slash annoying mentor who seemed to pop up to make him wrestle with things that he didn't fully understand. "Well, you said it's the dehumanization of people that's bad. So maybe if you're honest about what you want, it's less bad. Usually, when people get hurt in relationships, and about sex, it's when other people haven't been up front with them and what they really want."

The devil did golf claps. The devil did annoying-as-heck golf claps complete with an insincere beam, like Sam was the slow child who managed to cross the finish line twenty minutes after everyone else.

"You might also want to consider the effects of the socio-historical situational pressures, too," the devil said with his usual patronizing leer. "Or in other words, follow the money to see why things are they way they are. That's a piece of advice even a good capitalist can understand."

Yeah, okay, that made sense. Follow the money to explain why money was the reason he and Katie might get into some trouble. Sam rolled his eyes, and wasn't at all surprised to notice that Satan had decided to go and annoy someone else for a while.

Also, he had to wonder what kind of escaped soul he was going to have to chase this time. Follow the money, socio-historical situational pressures, random communist discussion of why marriage was kind of bad...Sam was not entirely looking forward to the next guy. Probably like, an evil economics professor or something.

"Hey, Sam," Andie said, snapping him out of la-la land. "What were you thinking about?"

"How to convince a girl that you're not dehumanizing her if you want to hook up with her," Sam said distractedly.

"Well, at the risk of sounding like an After-School Special, I think you need to realize girls are people too," Andie said. "And that, for example, girls sometimes like to hook up, and aren't just, y'know, evil money bots who trade sex for status and alimony."

Sam looked at Andie. "Huh?" he said. "Who said that?"

"Sorry. Bad day. Got into a discussion with this jerk at the grocery store," she said, waving it off. "But yeah. Girls are complicated, and it's bad to assume that just because they're not boys, they don't have complicated reasons for wanting things. Or not wanting things. Or not being sure if they want things."

Okay. Huh. Andie was being almost as confusing as the devil. "And that's because of socio-historical situational pressures?" Sam asked.

"Huh?" Andie asked. "I mean, I guess. But why are you calling it socio...whatever?"

"That's how someone put it to me," Sam replied. "Do you know what that means?"

Andie shrugged. "I think it means, like, the usual ideas people get about each other, like that girls don't really like hooking up because in the past, girls who were into it got in trouble. Which is probably because until the Pill, birth control was really unreliable and so screwing around could wreck your life."

Whoa. Deep. "Dude, that makes a lot of sense."

"I know, right?" Andie said. "I mean, that's not always true. Sometimes girls aren't into it because they've got their own problems."

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding along. "Yeah, yeah totally. Well. Yeah. I'm going to go think about this some more."

Because otherwise, his brain was going to explode from all the weirdness of Satan setting him up like that. Seriously. What was with delayed enlightenment? And now Sam was going to have to ask Katie if watching her mom be all about "Jerry" for all that time totally shaped her opinions about sex, because clearly, you had to ask girls...whoa. Whoa, he was having another moment of, "oh, you humanize women by asking them about their opinions about sex" and if he didn't go find Sock now, he was maybe going to end up a girl or kind of impressed with the devil.

Whoa. Very facts-of-life-y.

 


End file.
